Full Tilt Poker

The Full Title Poker site is the official online poker home of no less than ten of the best professional poker players - including the likes of Phil Ivey, Howard Lederer and Jennifer Harman - and is one of the richest out there as far as added features are concerned. We'll discuss those features shortly, but first let's look at the core game.

To play here you will need to download the Full Tilt Poker client software. This is available for both PC and Mac and weighs in at around 8Mb, which takes just a minute or two to download on a reasonable broadband connection.

Once downloaded, you just need to run the software, select a unique username, password and valid e-mail address and you can take a look around the poker room. You can take part in "play money" games straight away, but if you want to bet for real you will obviously need to provide more personal information (name and address, etc.) as well as your payment details.

There are plenty of games to choose from at Full Tilt Poker, including Texas Hold'em, Omaha, Omaha H/L, Stud, Stud H/L and Razz. You can play ring games, multi-table tournaments and sit and go tournaments. Games start at the $0.05/0.10 level and go right up to $200/$400, so it will be quite some time before you outgrow the site. And, of course, at Full Tilt Poker you get to play against the professionals from time to time – even at low level tables.

The play environment is just about as customisable as you could want it to be. Players are represented on screen by well designed avatars, and you can choose your own avatar (which can express emotions as you play) or turn them off altogether. The table is circular and emblazoned with the Full Tilt Poker logo, and you can set an option to auto-rotate it so that you're always at the centre of the screen no matter where you sit. The default background of a poker room is an image of the Vegas strip, but you can choose to change this to a beach scene, plain background or outer space scene, to name just a few. Add to the mix the ability to change the deck backgrounds and you can pretty much adjust the screen to suit you. The audio is pretty much standard for online poker sites and consists of alerts, chips sounds and so on. If we had to gripe about anything as far as presentation is concerned, it would be the cards themselves. They aren't ugly by any means, but they do look a little cramped and could benefit from being a tad larger.

Play itself is smooth and intuitive. Action buttons to check, call, raise and fold are all easy to identify and you won't get them mixed up as along as you're paying attention to the game. A chat box at the bottom left of the screen allows you to enjoy banter with your opponents or even to converse with the likes of Chris Ferguson, should you be lucky enough to play against a pro.

All of this makes Full Tilt Poker a very nice site, but what makes it a must-visit are the additional features it offers. These include over sixty online poker lessons from the pros, podcast interviews on improving your game and even videocast programmes that you can watch online or download for viewing later.

The bottom line is that all online players should check out the Full Tilt Poker site at least once, if only for the added features. The likes of Lederer, Ivey and Ferguson are happy to be associated with the site, and if you pay a visit yourself we think you'll see why.

Money & Security:

You can deposit money using Neteller, Firepay, Visa, Mastercard and Debit Cards. Full Tilt Poker holds a gaming license from the Kahnawake Gaming Commission and employs a random number generator which meets all requirements of the Commission to ensure an authentic gaming experience. Data is secured using 256-bit encryption to ensure confidentiality and privacy.

Contact:

24 hour customer service is available 7 days a week by e-mailing: support@fulltiltpoker.com